ALBANY

DANIELS RESIGNS TO RUN FOR GOVERNOR Randy Daniels, a former CBS News correspondent and potential contender for the 2006 Republican nomination for governor, resigned yesterday as Governor Pataki’s appointed secretary of state. While Mr. Daniels has been exploring a possible candidacy for months, he told the Associated Press last month that he could not legally be an announced candidate for governor and hold the state job because the Department of State administers federal funds. Mr. Pataki announced in July that he would not seek a fourth four-year term next year. A host of other Republicans, including Mr. Daniels, are eyeing the race. State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is the only announced Democratic candidate for governor.

– Associated Press

NORMAN AIDE DID NOT REPORT CONTRIBUTION

Assemblyman Clarence Norman Jr.’s treasurer did not report contributions from a lobbyist group to his 2000 and 2002 re-election campaigns because she did not know they had been made, the treasurer testified yesterday.

As treasurer of the Committee to Re-Elect Clarence Norman Jr., Carmen Martinez is responsible for reporting to the state Board of Elections any contribution to the assemblyman’s campaign valued above $99, be it cash or an “in-kind” contribution of services or goods. Normally, any bills received by the assemblyman’s district office are either faxed or given by hand to Ms. Martinez, who has fulfilled her duties as treasurer from home for 16 years. But over $10,000 from a campaign consulting company and a company that produced campaign literature, all of which passed through the assemblyman’s district office on their way to the lobbyist group, never made it to Ms. Martinez’s desk. The prosecution argued that Mr. Norman deliberately circumvented his own staff to avoid reporting contributions that exceeded the limit of $3,100. The defense attempted to pin the failure to report at least one of the contributions on Ms. Martinez.

– Special to the Sun

MANHATTAN

HOMEOWNERS WANT FUEL TAX RELIEF

Representatives of building-owners’ associations and the home fuel industry are asking the city to drop its 4% tax on heating oil and natural gas from November to February. The City Council plans to introduce a resolution asking for the state to allow the city to drop the tax. Yesterday, the council passed a resolution urging Albany to allow the city to lower the sales tax on gasoline. The cost of home heating fuel is expected to rise 33% over the winter. Joe Strasburg of the Rent Stabilization Association said the increased costs could not be easily recouped during the annual adjustments made by the Rent Guidelines Board.

– Special to the Sun

9/11 FAMILIES REBUFF LMDC

A mediation plan will not resolve the dispute over the International Freedom Center, family members of victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks said yesterday. In a joint press release, 15 family groups rebuffed the proposal by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency responsible for building at ground zero. The freedom center’s organizers describe it as a museum that will allow visitors to place September 11 in historical context. Opponents charge that it would host anti-American exhibits and events. Plans for the center had previously been scaled down in response to the criticism. A spokesman for the LMDC could not immediately be reached for comment.

– Staff Reporter of the Sun

GOSSIP WRITER ARRESTED AFTER SOLICITING ‘TEEN’

An Us Weekly gossip writer has been arrested on a charge that he tried to seduce an FBI agent posing on the Internet as a 13-year-old girl. Timothy McDarrah, editor of the “Hot Stuff” column, responded in June to a posting on the Craigslist.com Web site offering introductions to the “freshest, youngest” girls in New York, an FBI affidavit said. The gossip writer told an undercover FBI agent, who had posted the advertisement to lure pedophiles, that he would pay $200 for sex with a 13-year-old girl, the affidavit said.

Mr. McDarrah was arraigned in Manhattan federal court, held on $50,000 bond, and barred from using the Internet or having unsupervised contact with children. He did not enter a plea.

– Associated Press